What was the issue of cartridges? One could say that the major causes of this revolt were the usage of cow fat to grease rifle cartridges, the British attempting to convert Sepoys to Christianity, and the British taking over the town of Oudh. The rifle's cartridges contained 68 grains of FF black powder, and the ball was typically a 530-grain Pritchett or a Burton-Mini ball. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Total loading time: 0 A hardcore corporate, he initially worked for Hindustan Unilever and was later Director of Brooke Bond, India. [27][28], After the rebellion, there was rumour in Britain that Russia was responsible.[28]. Match the following: Answer: Government was ostentatiously neutral, but Hindu society was inclined to regard the missionaries as eroding Hindu society without openly interfering. Rumors began to spread that the grease used to make the cartridges was derived from pigs and cows, which would be highly offensive to Muslims and Hindus. B. Mangal Pandey was an Indian soldier who played an important role in incidents prior to the uprising of 1857, known by different names like the 'Indian Rebellion of 1857,' the 'Sepoy Mutiny' and 'India's First War of Independence.'. The Revolt of 1857, an anti-colonial movement which fought against the imperialist policies of the British East India Company, is an important event that took place in Indian history. No one seems to know the meaning of it. It is not known where it originated, by whom or for what purpose, whether it is supposed to be connected to any religious ceremony or whether it has to do with some secret society. Or it might have been an aristocratic plot, set off too soon by the Meerut outbreak. All Indian villages had one, and it was these men, running between their homes and the nearest neighboring settlement with chapatis, who so effectively raised panic among the ruling British. Whether the cartridge was unballed or balled, it was necessary, in loading a muzzle-loader, to open the end of the cartridge. In the late 1700s and early 1800s, sepoys tended to take great pride in their military prowess, and they exhibited enormous loyalty to their British officers. Wild stories circulated freely in the panic-stricken atmosphere of 1857, and there were enough real massacres and murders to make almost anything seem possible. The rapid spread of disorder in 1857when regiment after regiment had mutinied, and revolts against British rule had sprung up throughout most of northern and central Indiamade it almost impossible to believe that the rebellion could have been spontaneous (as most modern historians concede it was), and considerable effort was made to chronicle the movement and trace the spread of the anomalous chapatis. To save content items to your account, Pig was forbidden for Muslim and cow was sacred for Hindus, so both refused to use them and revolted in Meerut in May 1857. A rumor that spread like wildfire among the sepoys (Indian soldiers) stationed at cantonments throughout the north of the country was that the British had come up with yet another diabolical contrivance for breaking their caste and defiling their bodies: the greased cartridge. [11] If the caste of high-caste sepoys was considered to be "polluted", they would have to expend considerable sums of money on ritual purification before being accepted back into society. The Revolt of 1857, also known as the First War of Indian Independence, was a significant uprising against British colonial rule in India. Mason, Philip (1974), page 264 "A Matter of Honour", London: Holt, Rhinehart & Winston. Stbere im grten eBookstore der Welt und lies noch heute im Web, auf deinem Tablet, Telefon oder E-Reader. In most accounts of the revolt, the greased cartridge has been referred to as the spark and tinder that lit the flames of rebellion. As time passed, the powers of the commanding officers reduced and the government became more unfeeling or distant from the concerns of the sepoys. hasContentIssue true, THE FIRING PARADE OF 24 APRIL AND ITS SEQUEL, THE OUTBREAK: (a) The Native Infantry Lines, THE OUTBREAK: (b) The Native Cavalry Lines, THE OUTBREAK: (d) The European Troop Movements and the European Lines, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511563386.003, Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. In 1877, outside Delhi, essentially in the spot where bloody fighting had taken place 20 years earlier, an event called the Imperial Assemblage was held. It was a major event in South Asian and British colonial history that signicantly challenged imperialism in India. The mutiny and great revolt of 1857-59. The Bengal army of some 130,000 Indian troops may have contained as many as 40,000 Brahmans as well as many Rajputs. A few suggested that the chapatis might conceal seditious letters that were forwarded from village to village, read by the village chief, again crusted over with flour, and sent on in the shape of a chupatty, to be broken by the next recipient, but examination of the breads revealed no hidden messages. Then came the Western innovations of the now overconfident British. Outraged by events such as the massacre of women and children at Cawnpore, some British officers believed that hanging mutineers was too humane. Under a British policy called the "doctrine of lapse," the East India Company would take control of Indian states in which a local ruler had died without an heir. And the uprising became extremely violent. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/sepoy-mutiny-of-1857-1774014. Order was restored by the firmness of Charles John Canning (later Earl Canning), first viceroy of India (governed 185862), whose title of Clemency was given in derision by angry British merchants in Calcutta, and of Sir John Lawrence in the Punjab. He also resumed the practice of tax-free lands in some areas. Advertising Notice He ordered his fellow-official to make ten more, and give two to each of the five nearest village Chowkeydars with the same instructions. Its cartridges consisted of a .577 inch ball projectile and a charge of gun powder propellant wrapped in waterproofed cartridge paper. Kanpur The transfer of the number 66th which was taken away from a regular Bengal Sepoy regiment of the line disbanded over refusal to serve without batta, and given to a Gurkha battalion, was considered by the Sepoy as a breach of faith by the company. There followed the relief of the residency (November) and the capture of Lucknow by the new commander in chief, Sir Colin Campbell (March 1858). Lands were confiscated from the landlords and auctioned. The Revolt of 1857 eventually broke out over the incident of greased cartridges. On 29 March 1857, Mangal Pandey, a sepoy of the 34 th Bengal Native Infantry (BNI) mutinied against his commanding officers of the East India Company. Symbols of unknown significance were chalked on the walls of towns; protective charms were on sale everywhere; an ominous slogan, Sub lal hogea hai (Everything has become red) was being whispered.. The Personal Adventures and Experiences of a Magistrate During the Rise, Progression and Suppression of the Indian Mutiny (London: John Murray, 1884);Kim A. Wagner. A popular American illustrated magazine, "Ballou's Pictorial", published afull-page woodcutillustration showing the preparations for such an execution in its issue of October 3, 1857. In some cases, they used an execution method of lashing a mutineer to the mouth of a cannon, and then firing the cannon and literally blasting the man to pieces. ), Find out more about saving to your Kindle, Book: The Mutiny Outbreak at Meerut in 1857, Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511563386.003. [20], In 1857, the Bengal Army contained 10 regular regiments of Indian cavalry and 74 of infantry. But something important was required to provoke so many to seize the opportunity of a military uprising to stage a war of independence. Before the rebellion, there were reports that "holy men" were mysteriously circulating chapatis and lotus flowers among the sepoys. Your Privacy Rights In the altercation, Pandey was surrounded by British troops and shot himself in the chest. Click to view in higher resolution. Though the revolt failed in its objective, even in failure it served a grand purpose. The Indian Mutiny of 1857-59 was a widespread but unsuccessful rebellion against the rule of British East India Company in India which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British crown. "The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857." This movement became much more than a military mutiny. From the confidential physician to the King of Delhi: Nobody can tell what was the object of the distribution of the chupatties. Indian sepoys believed that the cartridge was greased with either pig fat or made from cow fat. In India, it has been viewed quite differently. This meant that when they came to be threatened by modernizing regimes in Calcutta, from the 1840s onwards, the sepoys had become accustomed to very high ritual status, and were extremely sensitive to suggestions that their caste might be polluted. The Politics of a Popular Uprising: Bundelkhand in 1857 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994);Mark Thornhill. The mysterious appearance of chapatisloaves of an Indian unleavened breadspooked the British administrators of the Raj shortly before the outbreak of rebellion in 1857. [7] Several years before the sepoys' mutiny, Lord William Bentinck had attacked several jagirs in western Bengal. The uprising was officially declared over on July 8, 1859. Indian soldiers in the East India Company's armies believed they risked defilement because the new rounds were being issued greased with the fat of pigs and cowsuntrue, but sufficient to spark the most dangerous uprising against British imperial rule since the American Revolution. Extensive inquiries into the meaning of the breads produced plenty of theories but few facts; even the runners and watchmen who baked them and carried them from village to village did not know why they had to run through the night with chupatties in their turbans, though they took them just the same. By origin, a cartridge is a container, usually of paper, designed to hold enough powder for one discharge of the weapon. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Their educational policy was a Westernizing one, with English instead of Persian as the official language; the old elites, schooled in the traditional pattern, felt themselves slighted. There is reason to believe that this was originated by some intriguers of the old Court of Lucknow. With the British recovery of Gwalior (June 20, 1858), the revolt was virtually over. Victoria added the title "Empress of India" to her royal title. There was rumor about an old prophecy that the company's rule would end after a hundred years. Eleven of the sepoys were executed and hundreds more sentenced to hard labor. To facilitate its passage, the cartridges were greased with tallow, which, in the U.K., was made of beef and pork fat. As early as 1806, concerns that the sepoys' caste may be polluted had led to the Vellore Mutiny, which was brutally suppressed. And the leaders were not united, because they sought to revive former Hindu and Muslim regimes, which in their heyday had bitterly clashed. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Loading the Enfield often required tearing open the greased cartridge with one's teeth, and many sepoys believed that the cartridges were greased with cow and pig fat. It came as a greater shock than the loss of the American colonies, and prompted reprisals far more hysterical and vicious than those visited on rebellious subjects elsewhere in the Empire. In the illustration, a mutineer was depicted chained to the front of a British cannon, awaiting his imminent execution, as others were gathered to watch the grisly spectacle. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox. The soldiers performed well on the field of battle in exchange for which they were rewarded with symbolic heraldic rewards such as battle honors in addition to the extra pay or "batta" (foreign pay) routinely disbursed for operations committed beyond the established borders of Company rule. The restoration of peace was hindered by British cries for vengeance, often leading to indiscriminate reprisals. "The Sepoy Mutiny of 1857." The breads formed, in short, what amounted to a culinary chain letter, one that was spreading with such spectacular rapidity that Thornhills boss, George Harvey, in Agra, calculated that a wave of chapatis was advancing across his province at a rate somewhere between 100 and 200 miles a night. As John Kaye wrote a few years later: Among other wild fables, which took firm hold of the popular mind, was one to the effect that the Companys officers had collected all the newly-manufactured salt, had divided it into two great heaps, and over one had sprinkled the blood of hogs, and over the other the blood of cows; that they had then sent it to be sold throughout the country of the pollution and desecration of the Mahommedans and Hindoos, that all might be brought to one caste and to one religion like the English. Thornhill examined the chapatis in his office. Another important source of discontent among the Indian rulers was that the British policies of conquest had created significant unrest. The greased cartridge - what was it all about? This event and Pandey's subsequent punishment led to more resentment among the sepoys of the Bengal Army ultimately aiding in the Revolt of 1857.. When the mood of the sepoys turned against their masters, they remembered Kabul and that the British were not invincible. Wagner concludes that the trigger for the rebellion of 1857 was thus rumour, not the actual issue, or use, of cartridges greased with animal fat; that, in any case, we simply don't know what sort of tallow was used at Gangadarh Banerji & Co.; and that - remarkable as it now seems - the truth of the matter never was established, even by the The cartridge had to be bitten off before loading it into the gun. The cartridges were wrapped in paper, which had been coated in grease which made the cartridges easier to load in rifle barrels. The ratio of British to Indian troops was fixed at roughly 1:2 instead of 1:5one British and two Indian battalions were formed into brigades so that no sizable station should be without British troops. In the Punjab were some 10,000 British troops, which made it possible to disarm the Indian regiments; and the recently defeated Sikhs were so hostile to the Muslims that they supported the British against the Mughal restoration in Delhi. @kindle.com emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. In the altercation, Pandey was surrounded by British troops and shot himself in the chest. [8], Unlike the Madras and Bombay Armies of the BEIC, which were far more diverse, the Bengal Army recruited its regular soldiers almost exclusively amongst the landowning Bhumihars and Rajputs of the Ganges Valley. A rumor spread that the cartridges of the new Enfield rifles were greased with the fat of cows and pigs. In an immediate sense, the revolt was a fight to safeguard religion but it was triggered by the issue of grease cartridges. 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